Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform and the man behind the pledge.

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Originally published on November 29, 2012 5:35 pm

There has not been a wave of defections by Republicans who signed on to his "no new taxes" pledge and even the few who have spoken about possibly going along with revenue increases won't do so in the end, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist told NPR Tuesday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for instance, imagines being willing to accept some increases in tax revenues if "Democrats would agree to fundamental reform of entitlements," Norquist told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. But such reform, he said, is something Democrats "haven't done in oh, I don't know, 60 years."

It's like imagining a "pink unicorn," Norquist said. "If you had a pink unicorn, how many dollars in taxes would you raise to trade for the pink unicorn? Since pink unicorns do not exist in the real world, it's never occurred to me to worry about the senator from South Carolina. He's not going to vote for a deal because the kind of 10-1 ratio deal he's talking about with real, iron-clad spending cuts is never going to happen."

Other Republicans will come to the same conclusion, predicts the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.

His analysis of the importance being attached to things said in recent days by Graham and a few other Republican lawmakers seems to agree with what our colleague Liz Halloran wrote Monday over at It's All Politics: "GOP Pushback On No-Tax Norquist: Less Than Meets The Eye." Norquist told Liz on Monday that Graham, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Rep. Peter King of New York (Republicans who have talked of breaking the pledge) aren't in leadership roles on tax issues and dropped the same hints two years ago — but didn't break their pledges then.

Much more from Norquist's conversation with Morning Edition is due on Wednesday's broadcast. Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts or streams the show. By the way, at one point he talked about "silver unicorns" too.

Norquist also told Steve that:

-- "There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower. ... The problem we have is that government spends too much," not that taxes are too low.

-- The stories about some Republicans saying they might break their no-tax pledge are repeats of what was being reported two years ago. "People are turning in the [same] homework for the second time," he said of the news media. But two years ago, Republicans concluded that President Obama and his fellow Democrats had not offered significant spending cuts. Norquist predicts the same will happen during negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

-- Keynesianism is an "economic fantasy" that has hurt, not helped job growth the past four years.

His voice rising as he spoke, Norquist said that "if we'd had a Reagan-sized recovery instead of an Obama-sized recovery over the last 3 1/2 years there would be 11-plus [more] million Americans at work. That's a lot of damaged lives because Obama has a theory and his theory was wrong — that if the government takes people's money and spends it you magically have twice as much money. ... Obama has put his ridiculous left-wing fantasy theories of Keynesianism above the lives of 11 million families in this country. That is an extremely bad thing that he did. And at some point you have to wonder why anybody does that to the country. He's done a lot of damage. We need to undo that damage."

The White House, of course, would make the case that the president's economic policies helped pull the economy out of the Great Recession he inherited. And, as NPR's Mara Liasson has reported:

"Inside the White House, officials say the president will stick to his principles but keep his options open [on taxes, entitlements and other spending]. Spokesman Jay Carney says the president wants a balanced deal.

"If you do that and you get to that $4 trillion mark, the way the president does, you will have a very positive effect, he believes — the president believes — on our overall economic prospects," Carney said, "because you will send a signal to the world that we're getting our fiscal house in order, but you'll also send a signal to the American people that we are doing it in a way that doesn't harm economic growth. It, quite the contrary, boosts economic growth."

Update at 7:45 a.m. ET, Nov. 28. One Republican On Why He Didn't Sign The Pledge:

Morning Edition also this morning aired an interview Congressman-elect Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who says he didn't sign the no-tax pledge because "my philosophy is, I gave a pledge to the people in my district. ... Signing a pledge is not going to fix our debt problems or our financial woes in this country." And, "anybody in their right mind" might be willing to support higher tax revenues if federal spending is brought under control, Yoho said.

Note at 7 a.m. ET, Nov. 28: This post was published at 1:05 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Nov. 27. When we added the audio from the broadcast version of Morning Edition's interview with Norquist, the timestamp was automatically changed to 4 a.m. ET Nov. 28 (Wednesday). It's a technical bug we're working to fix.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

So Ted Yoho did not sign a pledge not to raise taxes. Some Republicans who have now suggest they might be able to ignore it as part of a larger budget deal. That calls attention to the activist who wrote it years ago, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, who also came by our studios.

I asked Congressman Yoho, of the three moving parts here, which is more important to deal with: taxes, spending, federal debt? Debt. That was his answer. Debt. Is he wrong?

GROVER NORQUIST: Spending is the most important, because the other two derive from the total cost of government, is government spending.

INSKEEP: Well, I think what he's saying, though, is that the national debt is what is seen as a national security threat to the country, that you have, ultimately, debts that you cannot pay, that are unsustainable.

NORQUIST: Right. But the reason you have debts is because you spend too much money. Look, if the government spends $100, whether it takes 90 in taxes and borrows 10, or it takes all hundred, a hundred's gone. It doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the same deadweight cost to the economy.

Now, look, a freshman congressman that gets here hasn't yet figured out the games that politicians play. They cheated Reagan, OK, and they said we'll cut $3 of spending for every dollar of tax increase. Spending went up, not down. They did the same thing to Bush a few years later in 1990. Bush and Reagan were sophisticated people. They were not fools. They wanted the spending cuts, and yet by focusing on the deficit rather than total spending, they ended up getting taken. So, spending is the deadweight cost of government. We've got to keep taxes down. If you raise taxes, they just spend it.

INSKEEP: Is there any political situation in which it may be vital economic policy to accept higher tax revenues as part of a larger deal that also includes spending cuts?

NORQUIST: OK. You're talking about a hypothetical, and this is where someone like Lindsey Graham, Republican who's from South Carolina, has got himself wrapped around the axle.

NORQUIST: No, his anti-tax pledge. He made a commitment to the people of South Carolina. But he has made very clear - and we had a long conversation about this, because I trying to figure out what he was talking about. He images that the Democrats will agree to fundamental reform of entitlements, something they haven't done in, oh, I don't know, 60 years. But we imagine that they're going to. We imagine a pink unicorn.

Now, if you had a pink unicorn, how many dollars in taxes would you raise to trade for the pink unicorn? Since pink unicorns do not exist in the real world, it's never occurred to me to worry about the senator from South Carolina. He's not going to vote for a deal, because the kind of 10-to-one ratio deal he's talking about with real iron-clad spending cuts is never going to happen.

INSKEEP: Wait a minute. You were arguing that the string of Republicans who have said, eh, forget about Grover Norquist, forget about this no-tax flexibility - you're saying that the way they have laid out the potential deal is never going to happen, and therefore they're not actually promising or talking about raising taxes at all?

NORQUIST: Well, I'm speaking, in that case, specifically for the senator from South Carolina. Now, again, we're talking about four or five people, here. OK? I mean, this is not a wave - and, by the way, the same four or five people that we're talking about in all my interviews two years ago when we were going through this same fiscal cliff, although it was the debt ceiling bill. So it's the same cast of characters that have been brought out for the photographs again. And in point of fact, the four or five guys did not turn into a snowball. In fact, we got two-and-a-half trillion in spending restraint and no tax increases, something Obama's trying to re-litigate now.

INSKEEP: Does the cliff need to be avoided, in your view? Is it even something to worry about?

NORQUIST: Well, there are two issues, here. One is the automatic spending cuts. Those are a good idea. I'm open to doing the same number of - in cuts, same size cuts, in a different way. Some of the defense people think that you could save the same amount in defense, but doing it more artfully than the sequester does. Fine by me - as long as it's the same number.

INSKEEP: You're happy to cut spending anywhere you can get it.

NORQUIST: Sure, absolutely, including the defense spending. Second: the $500 billion tax increase that hits on January 1st is something that the Ds have to figure out what to do with. What they did two years ago - what all the same players around the same table, the same chessboard with the same pieces in the same place - was a decision to extend everything two years. They're very likely to do that again at the end of the day, unless Obama overplays his hand. Because, as he made the mistake four years ago, he thinks somebody made him king, and he spent all that money and got the Tea Party and lost the House.